Cooking & Eating & Living in Paris (& Leaving it, sometimes)

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The tart of your life…

…might look like the one I’ve prepared for dinner tonight. It was a delicious thing, made of a real pâte brisée (that’s pie or short pastry in English, I guess), a home made tomato sugo and fresh sardines that I had brought home from a street market here in Paris. It all depends on the sugo here, that’s the Italian word for a thick, sort of sticky sauce you normally pour over noodles. Mine was made of shallots, slowly cooked in peppered olive oil and fresh San Marzano tomatoes (grown in France). I’ve added a laurel leave, then five or six saffron strands, a teaspoon of capers, five or so fennel seeds, ten or so small olives from Nice. In the end, I generously sprinkled Parmesan cheese over the dish – and off it went into the hot oven, coming out again after 15 minutes as a simple, subtle superstar.